


The Death of a Nation, The Birth of a Nation

by hybridempress



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: American Revolution, Gen, Gun Violence, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-17
Updated: 2016-05-17
Packaged: 2018-06-09 03:10:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6887200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hybridempress/pseuds/hybridempress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The final hours of the Siege of Yorktown are fast approaching, but before Alfred can secure the victory for his country, Britain shoots France straight through the heart, and Alfred is forced to learn about the death of Nations the hard way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Death of a Nation, The Birth of a Nation

Thunder cracked overhead like a massive whip reverberating through the sky, and rain poured down in thick sheer sheets across the battlefield. As soldiers fought they caked themselves in mud, so much so that the blood from their wounds could not even be seen. Gunshots were mingled with cries of pain, shouts of command, and the sounds of Mother Nature’s violent tantrum. The bloodshed had only just begun, and yet, every soldier on either side was banking on not coming home when this was over. 

Alfred hated to leave his men like this. It wasn’t fair, they were fighting for him. But it didn’t matter how many soldiers were killed on the other side if their country refused to surrender. They would just keep sending more and more troops out, and more and more of Alfred’s people would die, until he had nothing left. If he wanted to end this war he’d have to do it at the source, and for that to happen, he would need to find Arthur. 

“Come on… Where the fuck is he…!? Coward!!” Alfred shouted, punching the wall of the trench that he had been peering over before trying to climb out of it. However, before he could really get anywhere, someone grabbed hold of the back of his coat and pulled him back to where he had been standing before.

“Now hang on a second, Alfred- You need to stop acting so recklessly or we’ll lose this for sure!” Francis shouted to Alfred, not letting go of the boy’s coat even as he struggled to free himself from Francis’ grip.

“My men are _dying,_ Francis, you can’t expect me to just sit here and wait for Britain to show his face! I have to go looking for him! I have to find him!” Alfred protested, gripping Francis’ wrist and trying to pull Francis’ hand away from his coat. 

“My men are dying too, Alfred! Or have you forgotten why I am here with you? I won’t have my soldiers die in vain! If you throw yourself into the field like this you’ll be killed for sure!” Francis hissed, tightening his grip on Alfred’s coat. 

“I can’t just stand here and do nothing, Francis,” Alfred said sharply, pressing his fingernails into the skin over the veins on Francis’ wrist, causing him to flinch and loosen his grip. “I’m going to find Britain.” 

Francis couldn’t say another word before Alfred had climbed out of the trench and started running into the battlefield. A low growl escaped Francis’ lips as he clenched one hand into a fist and kept the other tightly gripping his musket. “Goddammit, Alfred, get back here-!” he shouted, climbing out of the trench to follow Alfred. 

Alfred stayed as far away from the soldiers as possible. He wouldn’t let himself be killed, but he wouldn’t kill those men, either. Not even from Britain’s side. He couldn’t bring himself to do it. He couldn’t live with that kind of guilt. He couldn’t live with blood on his hands.

No matter how hard he looked, though, he couldn’t seem to find the man he was searching for. He couldn’t find the nation he was struggling so hard to separate from. It seemed like the coward would never show his face. It seemed like Alfred would never be able to force him to surrender. 

There was a ruffling noise behind him; the shaking of damp leaves coming from a small patch of bushes that he and the troops hadn’t cleared while digging trenches. Alfred turned around, aiming his musket in front of him despite the fact that he had no intentions to shoot it. A soft gasp escaped his lips and his eyes narrowed when he saw Arthur standing in the bushes that were quite a few feet away from him.

“Alfred get back-!” 

Francis’ desperate plea rang clear through the air but Alfred was too distracted to listen. Everything after that happened so fast that for a time Alfred could not even register what had happened. Alfred felt someone pushing him aside; he fell to the ground just as another gunshot split through the air. The next thing he heard was the sound of someone choking on their own breath, and he turned his head to see Francis stumbling backwards before toppling over into the dirt, lying flat on his back. Alfred could see blood gushing through and staining Francis’ uniform, right where his heart was. 

**”FRANCIS!”**

The scream was like that of a frightened child who had just awoken from the most dreadful nightmare imaginable. Alfred didn’t even bother getting to his feet; he just crawled over to Francis’ limp body, and pulled Francis’ head into his lap. Francis flinched and gasped in pain once again, and his gaze shifted up to Alfred’s face before his eyes went blank and his body was lifeless. 

“Francis…” Alfred whispered, his voice wavering as his breath caught in his throat and tears started to cloud his vision. He grabbed at Francis’ hand desperately with one of his own, and used the other to shake Francis’ shoulder rapidly. “Francis, Francis wake up, please, you can’t be dead you can’t- You can’t die here it isn’t fair, this isn’t even your home this wasn’t supposed to be your war! Goddammit, Francis, wake up!” 

Nothing happened. Francis’ eyes and body remained lifeless. Alfred shook his head desperately, as if that would somehow reverse what had happened. All he could do was repeat the word “No” over and over again as his crying became as heavy as the storm around them.

“Alfred-” 

Alfred’s head snapped away from Francis’ pale face, and he glared at Arthur hard enough to terrify even Satan himself. Arthur flinched and stopped in his tracks, though he had been trying to approach Alfred before Alfred had looked at him so hatefully. The shock was enough to even make Arthur drop his musket. 

“You killed him,” Alfred hissed.

“Alfred listen to me, it’s not what you th-”

“You killed him! You bastard! This wasn’t even his war he just came here to help me fight so I could save myself from you and _you killed him!_ ” 

The volume and ferocity of Alfred’s voice was on par with a lion’s roar. Even through the thick coat of rain it was impossible not to see the tears that were spilling from Alfred’s eyes as he held Francis’ body in his lap. Every time Arthur tried to open his mouth, Alfred would cut him off more viciously than before. 

“For God’s sake Alfred I’m asking you to lis-” 

Alfred let out what sounded like a battle cry, leaving Francis’ body behind as he grabbed his musket and scrambled to his feet. He rushed at Arthur head-on, bashing Arthur’s chest with the stock of his musket and knocking the wind out of him. He flipped the musket around and stabbed Arthur through the shoulder with his bayonet, eliciting a sharp half-gasp, half-shriek of pain from the nation’s lips. He kicked Arthur in the chest, sending him falling backwards onto the ground, and followed him down, straddling his hips and holding the barrel not even an inch away from his forehead. 

Arthur didn’t try to speak again. He knew that if he said anything, Alfred would probably blow his brains out. But if Alfred would actually listen to Arthur for a goddamn minute, he’d realize that even if he did blow Arthur’s brains out, that wouldn’t really have been the end of the personification of the British Empire. 

And yet, to Arthur’s surprise, Alfred dropped his musket at Arthur’s side. He covered his face with his hands and cried into them, eventually slumping down to lay on top of Arthur and pound a fist into his chest every couple of seconds. Even after all that had happened, Alfred still couldn’t bring himself to shoot Arthur. He was still too naive. He was still too young to deal with blood on his hands. 

“I hate you…” Alfred whispered, and choked out a loud sob. He pounded on Arthur’s chest again. “I hate you!!” 

Arthur swallowed thickly. It was taking everything in him to keep himself from crying as well. He finally dared to try speaking to Alfred once again.

“Alfred, please… If you would just listen, I could explain-”

Alfred sat up and glared at Arthur again. “Don’t call me Alfred. Do _not_ call me Alfred. You haven’t earned that right! My name… is the United States of America! And you _will_ address me as such! Give me your surrender!” he bellowed. 

“Al-”

_”Give me your surrender!”_

Once again, there was silence. Arthur stared up at Alfred in a mixture of awe and terror. Alfred stared back at him with an air of confident superiority and hatred. Arthur knew that Alfred would not back down this time.

Nervously, Arthur cleared his throat, though his breath still seemed to catch when he tried to speak again. “A-As you wish, then. United States of America, I… I-I surrender.”

“Say it louder. The troops need to hear,” Alfred hissed.

Arthur had no other choice but to comply at this point. Alfred had won. Arthur could never bring himself to kill Alfred, and Alfred would certainly not surrender after this. Arthur had lost. It was finally time for him to accept that. 

“I surrender!” he shouted, as loud as he possibly could. “The British Empire surrenders! America has won!” Arthur covered his face with his hands, and whispered, just loud enough for both him and Alfred to hear, “Alfred has won…”

Just like that, the fighting stopped. Arthur’s soldiers heard his cry and spread it to one another as they backed into retreat. They passed word on to their general, the command from their country was to surrender. 

Alfred did not say another word to Arthur that day. He pushed himself off of Arthur and stood up, walking away from him. Arthur tried to get up and follow him, but the gaping, bloody hole in his shoulder where Alfred’s bayonet had pierced was not helping him. Eventually he managed to push himself into a sitting position just in time to see Alfred taking his coat off and laying it over Francis’ body. 

“I never meant to shoot him, Alfred!” Arthur called, his voice hoarse. “I’d been aiming for you- I was aiming for your shoulder! I didn’t want to kill either one of you! If that bastard hadn’t tried to push you out of the way he wouldn’t have gotten hurt! He should have known I wouldn’t have killed you! You both should have known!” 

Alfred ignored him. He scooped Francis’ body into his arms and held him close, trying to keep Francis covered from the rain as much as possible. Several of Alfred’s men rushed to his side, asking him questions that he, quite frankly, had no idea how to answer at the time. There was only one thing on Alfred’s mind at this time: Francis was dead, and it was because of Arthur. For that, Alfred would never forgive him. 

\---

It had been a week since the victory in Yorktown, and Alfred still had not let go of the body.

Every soldier who had died in the last day of the siege had been given funerals and were buried by the next day, but when the doctors came to Alfred’s house to clean Francis’ body up and take him away, Alfred threatened them at knifepoint to leave. After that, he cried for hours as Francis’ body lay still in the bed that Alfred had brought him too. Alfred just wasn’t ready to say goodbye. 

Everyone in the town thought it to be some sort of witchcraft that Francis’ body hadn’t yet started producing the foul stench of death. Never in recorded history had a dead body stayed fresh for this long. It was inexplainable, other than the vague guesses that it had something to do with the fact that Francis was not exactly human. Alfred just used it as an excuse to be able to wait longer before saying goodbye. 

These days Alfred spent most of his time in the room where the body lay. Somedays he sat in silence, while other days were filled with his cries of agony, and the sound of plates and glasses shattering against walls, with curses shouted, accompanied by Arthur’s name. The people in the town were afraid Alfred had gone mad. 

It was storming again now, just as it had been on the day that Francis had died. Alfred was in the room again, sitting on the bed. Holding Francis’ hand. Crying. His tears fell onto Francis’ face in time with the pitter-patter of raindrops against the windows. 

Alfred didn’t notice it at first, when Francis stirred. It was such a soft movement. Just a twitch of the hand. Alfred had simply thought that it had been his own hand, shaking. 

But then there was a jolt. The body that was beside Alfred sat bolt upright in the bed. The sudden movement caused Alfred to open his eyes, and the first thing he saw were Francis’ lively cerulean eyes staring at him. Alfred’s mouth dropped open. 

“F-Francis…?” Alfred whispered as more tears welled up in his eyes and poured down his face. 

Francis blinked a few times, trying to adjust his eyes to the dim light in the room. When he saw how Alfred was crying, he frowned deeply. “Alfred…? What’s the matter? Why are you crying?” he asked softly.

“F-Francis, y-you were… You were dead, Francis you were dead!” Alfred whimpered, his voice trembling, before pulling Francis into a tight hug and crying heavily into his shoulder.

Francis quickly wrapped his arms around Alfred and held him close. He ran his fingers through Alfred’s hair in an attempt to get the boy to calm down. He pressed a light kiss to the top of Alfred’s head.

“How long was I out for…?” Francis murmured.

“A-A week,” Alfred choked, “you were dead for a week.” 

Francis’ expression softened, and he pulled away from Alfred, grabbing Alfred’s shoulders and forcing the boy to look at his face. “Only a week…? That’s not so bad, Alfred, why are you crying so much?” he asked.

Alfred stared at him with a bewildered expression, shaking his head as he tried to calm himself down. “I-I don’t understand, I- Why wouldn’t I be crying, Francis? You were dead, I thought I’d lost you, I-I thought he killed you-!”

Francis pursed his lips. “Alfred, you can’t have expected me to wake up after a couple of days. I’d say it’s lucky that I woke up after only a week. You really didn’t need to fret so much,” he said.

Alfred kept shaking his head. “I don’t understand why you’re acting like this isn’t a big deal! You’re acting like you knew you’d come back from the beginning, like _I_ should have known, a-and I still don’t understand how this happened! I don’t know what’s going on!” he wailed. 

Francis’ eyes widened as the realization that Alfred hadn’t been alive long enough to experience the “death” of another nation before. He had no idea how these kinds of things worked. No wonder he had been crying so much; he really thought that Francis would never open his eyes again. 

“Oh, Alfred…” he murmured, pulling the boy into a hug once again. He pressed another light kiss to Alfred’s head as Alfred buried his face into Francis’ chest. 

“Alfred, I’m a Nation. It would take a lot more than a simple bullet through the heart to put me under for good,” he whispered.

Alfred was the one to pull away this time, and he looked up at Francis with a confused expression, his tears finally starting to subside. “What do you mean…?” he asked.

“Alfred, when a Nation receives a wound that would be fatal to a human, in most cases, it causes the Nation’s body to die, but only for a short period of time. The spirit of the Nation is bound to this body, and works hard to patch it up so that it can be used again. Depending on the severity of the wound, it obviously takes more time to heal, but nevertheless it will heal. I have died many times before, Alfred. This was not my first death, nor, I’m sure, will it be my last. But I promise you, my spirit will not depart from this world for a very long time yet,” Francis told him. 

Alfred didn’t say anything for a long time. He had stopped crying now, and was just trying his hardest to process all the new information he had learned. Finally, he looked at Francis again, his expression having softened. 

“So…- So Britain… He knew he hadn’t really killed you…?” he asked.

Francis hummed a little, and nodded. “Yes, I assume so. Wouldn’t have been the first time he’s tried, though,” he answered.

Alfred furrowed his brows. “Then how come you pushed me out of the way? He told me… He told me he was aiming for my shoulder- That he didn’t want to kill me. But even if he had shot me in the heart, I wouldn’t have died! So why did you take the bullet for me?” he asked. 

Francis frowned, and shifted his gaze down to the bed. “Alfred… You’re not… You weren’t independent yet. If he had shot you, and killed you, that would have been it. He would have won the war, and the United States of America wouldn’t exist. Your spirit would serve no purpose because your nation would be crushed. Maybe you would have been reborn as another personification for the colonies, but America… America would have been gone. And I couldn’t let that happen. It was better for me to take the bullet than to risk him missing your shoulder and have him kill you,” he explained before glaring at the sheets on the bed. “The bastard wasn’t even thinking… He could have killed you and he didn’t even care…” 

“I-it’s okay though, Francis! Because I _am_ independent now!” Alfred said quickly, taking Francis’ hands into his own.

Francis’ eyes widened again, and he quickly looked at Alfred. “You won the battle? Britain surrendered?” he asked, shocked. 

Alfred nodded excitedly. “A-after he shot you, I… I attacked him, and forced him to surrender. He… He called me by the name of my country, and called his soldiers off… We still need to draw up a treaty and all that, but… I won, Francis. _We_ won,” he said.

“Oh, don’t be so modest, Alfred. This is _your_ victory. Hell, I was apparently dead for a good portion of it,” Francis said, laughing softly.

Alfred shook his head again. “No, Francis, this is all because of you. I never could have won against Britain if you hadn’t come to help me out, and I… I only had the strength and the courage to attack him after he shot you… I was so angry at him for killing you that nothing else mattered. I just wanted to make him pay for that,” he admitted. 

Francis’ lips trembled a little. He looked as though he was about to cry, and he carefully pulled Alfred back into another hug. “Well, I’m glad it gave you the push you needed, at least… But I hope you won’t fret over me like that again… I promise, Alfred, I’m not going to be leaving you anytime soon,” he whispered. 

“I can’t promise that I won’t worry about you, Francis. I’ll always worry about you, just like I know you’ll always worry about me. But at least I know now that you’ll always come back,” Alfred said.

Francis laughed softly again. “You’re right, Alfred. I’ll always worry about you,” he whispered. “And I’ll always come back.”

**Author's Note:**

> I debated for a long time whether or not to tag this with major character death but decided not to since francis didnt actually die lmao. anyways. Ummm you can't tell me that when Alfred met Francis again to ask him for help in the revolution, alfred didn't get a biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiig crush on the devilishly handsome frenchman ;^))))))) that being said it only makes sense that he'd be unable to accept the death of Francis, seeing as how he was slowly falling in love with Francis, and Francis was p much his only friend at the time. (besides prussia, but like, you know) anyways hope you guys like this pieve of shit, I'm out B)c


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